Part Of Your World
by Lily Orange
Summary: What if Ariel, Scuttle, Flounder, Sebastian and Eric all went to the same seaside high school? Ariel is haplessly in love with the most sought after boy in school, Eric Prince - can she get him to fall for her and teach him that she is the perfect girl?
1. The Dinglehopper Conspiracy

_**Part of Your World**_

**By Lily Orange**

_What if Ariel, Flounder, Sebastian, Scuttle and Eric all went to the same high school by the sea? Ariel's sisters are all popular, and so is Eric. Ariel is the quiet but inquisitive bookworm who is haplessly in love with the most sought-after boy in school, Eric Prince; unfortunately for her, he doesn't know she exists. Eric is on the lookout for the perfect girl, and a chance encounter at the beach may prove destiny for them – but who is the enigmatic Vanessa who is trying to gain Eric's attention?_

A story of romance, mystery and friendship

_A/N: _I've never written a fic for The Little Mermaid before but I love it so much so decided to have a go, I hope you like it, please review!

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**Chapter One**

_**The Dinglehopper Conspiracy**_

"Ariel, why didn't you get me a dinglehopper?" my friend Scuttle demanded as I approached our lunch table in the school canteen, clutching a bottle of Evian and a ham and cucumber baguette. I raised my eyebrows in confusion as I took my usual seat – beside Flounder, opposite Sebastian and Scuttle, who looked at me expectantly.

"Because you are eating a packet of crisps. And you don't need a _fork_, Scuttle, because that is what it is called, a _fork_, to eat crisps," I informed him, unscrewing the top of my water bottle brutally in order to be able to actually drink the stuff inside. I swear they make the tops that tight just to torture people.

"Ariel! Haven't I told you, many a time, that they are not called _forks_? It's just some kind of weird thing by the cutlery industry that they think they can mislead citizens of the world into _thinking _dinglehoppers are called forks when in actual fact they aren't," Scuttle chastised me. A girl from a neighbouring table gave him a strange look before reverting back to her green salad. He just grinned lopsidedly.

"Yeah, you have, but I still think, like the billion and one times before, that you are wrong," I smiled charmingly, tucking a strand of my loose crimson hair behind my ear. He harrumphed, and crossed his arms obstinately. I think I need to mention that Scuttle's name was not actually Scuttle – well, it kind of was. His proper name is Frederick Scuttle but he hated being called Frederick or even Fred (which is what Sebastian called him when he was trying to annoy him) so we just used his surname. Even the _teachers _called him Scuttle, and had done since he was about four when he boldly told them that was what he would answer to and nothing else.

"Very true," Flounder smirked beside me, devouring his pizza with gusto. Flounder, likewise, was not his real name. Flounder's real name was Matthew, but he used to have this fascination with fish (and still kind of did) so he earned his nickname off his parents.

"Come on, guys, we need to take a stand against the Man!" Scuttle whined, shoving about six salt and vinegar crisps into his mouth at once. "He," he continued, leaning in to hiss his little message to us, "is the person who is trying to keep everybody in the dark about the dinglehopper thing."

"Sure, Scuttle, now can we just eat our food?" I asked patiently.

"Fine," he conceded, "but I'm right."

"As per usual," I murmured, causing Flounder to snort with laughter.

We sat in silence for a few moments, Sebastian eating his pasta he had brought from home – he has fancy tastes – Scuttle munching his crisps like his life depended on it, Flounder demolishing his vegetable pizza insatiably and me daintily eating my baguette.

"I found something else out that the man is trying to keep from us," Scuttle informed us in an important voice, it was as if he had discovered the meaning of life, his voice was filled with so much significance.

"What?" I asked, the patience slightly wearing away now. I wanted to eat my baguette, I was hungry and it was lunchtime! That's what people _did _at lunchtimes! They ate their food and were allowed to eat their food without interruption. Unfortunately, it seemed Scuttle hadn't quite grasped this. At all.

"Well, I found this thing in my dad's garage–" Scuttle began, but this time it was Sebastian who interrupted.

"Not your dad's garage again," he chastised, "you always manage to injure yourself in there."

"It's a hazardous place!" Scuttle defended himself. "But I go in there for the good of mankind, so that we can take a stand against the man."

"Scuttle, stop it with your man!" I said, a little louder than intended, and half the canteen turned to stare at us. I think I had maybe just given the impression to a substantial fraction of the school population that Scuttle was gay. I knew for a fact he wasn't, as he kind of had a thing for my sister Andrina. But nobody else knew that. Seeing as I had no idea how to rectify the situation, I just silenced myself and agreed to listen to what he had to say.

"This thing," he said, producing an old-fashioned pipe out of his schoolbag.

"A pipe?" Flounder asked sceptically.

"Not a pipe, Floundy, my boy," Scuttle said excitedly, "a _snarflat_."

"Oh brother," Flounder cursed, rolling his eyes and going back to eating his pizza.

"You could make music with it!" Scuttle persisted annoyingly.

"That's nice, Scuttle, but can't we eat our food now?" Sebastian suggested.

"I suppose. But remember – don't let the man keep you down!" Scuttle said, holding up his fist in the air in a 'Power to the People' motion.

"Yeah, right," I muttered.

I scanned my eyes across the canteen – a regular practice to observe who was occupying the tables, as not everybody, like us, sat at the same table every time. And nobody sat at our table because it was by the bin, but you got the most amazing view looking out to sea from where we sat. I noticed random groups of girls accumulating around tables, boys boisterously laughing about things, and then the table I always stared at on the higher part of the canteen. It was the largest table in there, with twelve seats crammed in around it. Because of it being the largest table, it was always occupied by the same group.

To be fair, I had connections with that group – the group who were undoubtedly the most popular people in Atlanta Bay School – as my six sisters belonged to it. I watched them every lunchtime, giggling wildly and gossiping animatedly with each other and with their boyfriends.

Aquata, wearing her signature blue colour with her brown hair piled on top of her head using a pearl headband, was grinning coyly at her boyfriend Steve, this really tall boy with sandy-coloured hair who played rugby on the school team. Aquata was my oldest sister, but by no means the bossiest. That was Attina, also brunette and who liked to wear orange, who was sat next to Aquata (even though they had issues with the fact that Aquata kept borrowing Attina's belongings and forgetting to put them back – I frequently borrowed Attina's coral necklace when she wasn't looking, but I always sneaked it back into her jewellery box later) with her boyfriend John, who was really clever and had applied to go to both Oxford and Cambridge to do Maths. I liked John – he always helped me with my Trigonometry homework as I just did not get that sine and cosine thing. He was patient too, which was probably good if he was going out with the sweet yet dominating Attina.

Across from those two I could see Andrina, dressed in pink and purple (her two favourite colours) and laughing wildly with her premature comedian boyfriend Tom, whose ambition was to do stand up and was, to be fair, utterly uproarious. Every story he told and everything he said was just plain funny, it was uncanny.

Andrina was neighboured by Alana, whose black curly hair was practically spiralling out of control, but her other half Dan, who was the sportiest boy I had ever met in my whole entire life, was patting her on the head cutely in order to tame those curls which Alana spent most mornings spraying control spray on, but to no avail. Dan's best friend, Eddie, was sat beside him, who was sharing pizza with my glamorous blonde sister Arista, who was coveted by most of the boys in the school with her pale blonde hair and big eyes. She was curvy and wore mainly red summery dresses to school, especially in this heat, and had the most infectious laugh. She adored music too, much like myself, but wasn't really a big fan of singing. She liked to listen to Eddie's band, The Shark Bite, play. Sebastian was in the band, so he got on with Eddie really well.

My final sister, Adella, was leaning on her boyfriend James adoringly, her dark brown hair spilling onto his shoulder. She was clad in an olive green cardigan and a cream summer dress, with, like Aquata, pearls decorating her hair. James was an aspiring writer, who constantly wrote her poetry and short stories. I was kind of in awe of James slightly, but not as much as I was in awe of James' friend, Eric.

Eric Prince, it had to be said, was the most stunning boy in the whole entire school. He sat right at the end of my sister's table, disinterested in their flirtatious banter, and instead either spent the time reading – _classics_, may I add – or messing about with his cousin Grimsby, a lanky boy who looked constantly bored.

I was utterly in love with Eric, but he didn't even know I was alive, practically. He knew my sisters like the back of his hand, but he didn't know me. At lunches and breaks, I was either sitting with my friends on our lunch table at the other side of the canteen, in the music room practicing my singing with Sebastian or lying on the grass that looked directly out to sea.

If I was ever going to get Eric to notice me, then I would have to do something drastic. Beautiful eighteen-year-old boys with ebony hair, olive skin, mesmerizing sapphire blue eyes and tall, athletic bodies don't wait around for pale red-haired sixteen-year-olds to introduce themselves to them. Eric was so beautiful he had his own fan club, I had heard them in the girls' toilets – gossiping about which of them would make Eric's perfect girlfriend.

I knew who would be Eric's perfect girlfriend. She, like him, adored reading classics such as _Pride and Prejudice _and _Jane Eyre_. She, like him, liked The Shark Bite and went along to their concerts religiously to support them. She, like him, adored the sea. I knew I was right for Eric, but there was just the small matter of him not knowing I existed. I needed him to know, it was eating me up inside.

I could tell Sebastian, Flounder and Scuttle thought something weird was going on with me at the moment – every time I went to the library, heading straight to the classics, and picked up a book that I hadn't read before, such as _Dr Zhivago _by Boris Pasternak or _Dracula _by Bram Stoker, and I saw his name, the last one signed on the card in the front cover, I instantaneously had to take it out to read it. His name signed on those library cards had encouraged me to read some truly fantastic books – never before had I considered _The Tenant of Wildfell Hall _or _The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde_, but after seeing Eric's name, I read them and realised that he had supreme incomparable taste.

"You know what, guys? I think I might pop to the library, to, you know, get some books out," I told them. I noticed that Eric and Grimsby had now left my sisters' lunch table, so I was secretly praying that they were in the library, so then I could perhaps exhibit to Eric how brilliant my taste in books was.

"Are you sure, Ariel?" Flounder questioned. "I thought we were going to slip down to the caves in the cliff for the last forty minutes of lunch!"

My eyes lit up – the only thing that cancelled out any idea of pursuing Eric was my love for adventure. Sebastian frequently tried to remind us how if we got caught we would be in so much trouble we would be grounded until we were ninety, but then I reminded him that what was life without a little adventure?

That was when I found myself sneaking through the fence at the back of school and down the cliff path to the beach at the bottom, smiling euphorically, Scuttle, Flounder and Sebastian following me cautiously.

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Thanks for reading, please review! Hope you have a lovely holiday :)

:) x Lily Orange x (:


	2. The Handsome Prince

_**Part of Your World**_

**By Lily Orange**

_What if Ariel, Flounder, Sebastian, Scuttle and Eric all went to the same high school by the sea? Ariel's sisters are all popular, and so is Eric. Ariel is the quiet but inquisitive bookworm who is haplessly in love with the most sought-after boy in school, Eric Prince; unfortunately for her, he doesn't know she exists. Eric is on the lookout for the perfect girl, and a chance encounter at the beach may prove destiny for them – but who is the enigmatic Vanessa who is trying to gain Eric's attention?_

A story of romance, mystery and friendship

_A/N: _Thanks for your supportive response to the last chapter - I literally finished this 10 minutes ago so hopefully you'll like it! Thanks to quibbler149, bluesmidge101 and sarlovesoccer for the reviews; thank you to quibbler149 and bluesmidge101 for adding my story to your alert subscriptions and thank you to sarlovesoccer for adding my story to your favourites! Thanks for reading :)

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**Chapter Two**

_**Mr Handsome Prince**_

Flounder was jittery as we reached the sands at the base of the cliffs. I breathed in the freshly salty air and it overwhelmed me as we scuttled along the beach rapaciously, careful not to be seen by anybody as, strictly speaking, we were supposed to be at the top of the cliff in school.

"Are you sure we're supposed to be down here?" he whispered nervously, looking behind him as if he was being tailed by the Headmistress of Atlanta Bay High School, Mrs Green, who was one of the scariest women I had ever met.

"Flounder, don't be such a guppy!" I rebuked him impatiently. The caves were slightly further along than we imagined, so five minutes later we still weren't there. Instead we had managed to take in a quarter of a mile of breathtaking views of the oceanic horizon, which I wasn't exactly complaining about. I loved the sea – at weekends I would swim in it, with Flounder sitting on the rocks cautiously, watching me frolic about happily. He was much more timid and less adventurous than I, but we had been best friends for a long time.

"Shouldn't we have checked how long it would have taken us to walk to the caves?" Scuttle panted after I increased our pace to a slow jog in my anticipation of approaching the caves which we had never investigated before. I had sailed past them in my father's boat with him plenty of times, but I had never really taken much notice until two days previous when Sebastian had come out with us and had asked me if I had ever entered them. It was from that the idea to explore them was born, and was now finally being put into action, regardless of whether or not Eric was taking classics out of the school library and whether it was a prime time for me to watch him perusing the shelves for his next page-turner behind the reference section, which was adjacent to the classics.

"Where's your sense of adventure?" I replied unsympathetically, sprinting forward, knowing that the caves were just around the corner. It had taken us ten minutes to get this far, so we would have to be in and out of the caves in about fifteen minutes to get back to school on time.

"Are we there yet?" Sebastian whined as we turned the corner and nearly ran slap bang into a pile of rocks that were next to the entrance of the first cave. I turned to look at him, grinning smugly, as if to say, 'There's your answer'.

"They look kind of, um, dark..." Flounder said, peering inside vigilantly.

"Be quiet," I shushed him irritably, and stepped into the cave fearlessly. It was reasonably dark, but it was soon lit up by Sebastian drawing his mobile phone out the pocket of his jeans and flipping it open so that the light from his screen, a photo of his beloved guitar, shone outwards, giving the cave an even eerier glow than before.

"Hate to break it to you, Ariel, but there's nothing here," Scuttle informed me dismissively. I span round to see him standing right at the mouth of the cave like a wimp.

"That's because _you've _not come in far enough," I retorted, stepping off the damp sand onto the ever so slightly slippy rocks. I carefully lodged my dark brown gladiator sandal into a ridge on the rock and put my weight onto my front foot, balancing on the ledge. Luckily I was unlike my sisters in the fact that I didn't often wear dresses and skirts to school; today I was wearing dark green shorts with a white vest top and a dark grey cardigan, a perfect exploring outfit. My brown leather messenger bag was slung over my shoulder, the front flap unclasped, ready for me to put any treasures in that I found concealed between the dark and magical rocks littering the vast expanse of cave before me.

"I don't intend on it. I just tell you what things are, I don't aid in the whole finding process," Scuttle explained, leaning back against the arch of the cave mouth. Flounder was only standing approximately three millimetres further in, his usually bright and cheery face as pale as snow and anxious, a green tinge taking over as if he was about to throw up.

"Are you okay, Flounder?" I questioned in concern. He smiled at me weakly.

"I'm fine Ariel – just feeling a little nauseous, that's all..." he grimaced, clutching his stomach.

"Are you afraid of getting caught?" I grinned knowingly. "Don't worry about it, Flounder; there's nobody else but us on this beach, or in this cave, for that matter!"

"There shouldn't be anybody on the beach or in the cave at all," Sebastian said warningly, flipping his phone open again to renew the light that had previously lit up the dark and portentous cave.

"Aw, don't be such a _guppy_!" I said playfully.

"Ariel," he began, his Jamaican accent thick and distinguished, "I'm not being a guppy. Just hurry up and have a look!"

Sebastian was half-Jamaican; he had moved to our little English bay when he was seven years old and still retained his accent, despite the fact that he only visited his native country once every two years. Though, to be fair, his father was Jamaican and he himself had an incredibly thick yet enthralling accent that I delighted in listening to. Although Sebastian was often the unwanted voice of reason and order in our little group, I liked to hear his voice. His mother, on the other hand, was British through and through, with a proper English accent that had not been diluted by the decade she spent in the Caribbean with her husband. They were such a charming and interesting family.

"Fine, I'll go and look, wait there!" I shouted to him as I commenced my swift manoeuvres through the slightly damp and shiny rocks. They glittered delicately in the low light, enchanting me beyond belief.

"How do you know there's no-one at the back of the cave, Ariel?" Flounder called after me fretfully, but I merely smiled back at him boldly and carried on slipping between the rocks and skipping over them with much practiced skill.

As I neared the back of the cave, which I was sad to see was completely straight, with no rambling tunnels that cut further through the cliff, I saw that the rocks changed colour marginally and was determined to find some little broken off bits to add to my collection.

My collection consisted of things I had collected through exploration of local sites, places on school trips and places I had been for the day. It contained things such as little figurines from castles and stately homes, pressed flowers Attina had done for me when I collected them on a trip to our grandparents' house in Northumberland, numerous photos from places we had been and my large rock collection. My sisters, and my friends, for that matter, couldn't fathom why I liked to collect rocks, but I did. They were stunning and so pretty to look at.

The rocks I was staring at currently were such a beatific shade of indigo that I simply had to find one, but seeing as Sebastian was complaining to Scuttle and Flounder that I was taking too long in the background, I rapaciously scavenged amongst the debris on the floor and eventually found some pebble-sized broken bits which were absolutely striking. I smiled to myself cheerfully and slipped them into my bag.

As I turned to go back to my friends, I caught sight in my peripheral vision of some shells that were laying haphazardly behind a large boulder-sized rock just beside me. I leaned over the rock and flipped my head over the front to see them – I pushed my vibrant red hair back as I scrutinized the shells closely. They seemed to be reasonably old and not belonging to any crabs or the like, and as there were no rock pools about, I decided that it would be safe to take them with me too.

"Ariel!" Sebastian called impatiently. I ran through the rocks, nimbly jumping over any rocks that presented a tripping hazard, obstructing my way, until I was halfway back and almost near my friends.

"What?" I replied. "I just found the most amazing rocks and some shells too–" I gabbled elatedly, holding tightly onto the strap of my bag.

"That's brilliant but we actually have five minutes until lunch ends and lessons commence!" Sebastian caterwauled, the urgency evident in his silky voice.

"Bloody hell!" I cursed, rushing forward even quicker than before.

"We'll need to sprint to get back in time, _all the way_," Scuttle declared unhappily – it was his own fault that he wasn't the fittest of teenagers. He rejected any form of exercise as a way of the man keeping us down and domineering our lives. It didn't really matter to him, he was as thin as a beanpole, but it meant he was out of breath when he had been running for about twenty seconds.

"Well come on then!" I bellowed, and we all surged forward, running like we had never run before along the sands, back in the direction of school. The wind was whipping through my hair, powering me on. I emitted a loud laugh, exhilarated by the adrenaline rush our sprint was providing me with.

"You may find this funny, Ariel, but when we have to walk home, I will be murdering you for making me run!" Scuttle panted homicidally.

"Too bad, slow coach!" I yelled back, almost back at the cliff path which led back up to school. Scuttle and Flounder were far behind, but Sebastian, who, besides being a guitarist in The Shark Bite, was a runner, was quite a bit ahead, and was swinging himself onto the steps using the rope that was roughly attached into the side of the rock and was launching himself up them.

"We're already late, Ariel!" he hollered as I began to leap up the steps, three at a time, quickly gaining on my fast friend. When we reached the top, we slipped under the fence that bordered our school from the wide public footpath that ran across the edge of the cliff. We didn't wait for Flounder and Scuttle as we hurtled into the school building as they were piteously far behind; this made us sound undeniably horrible but I had English Literature and we were completing a class project on Jane Austen which I certainly didn't want to miss, and Sebastian had double Maths with Mr Carrington who was quite possibly the grumpiest teacher in the whole history of Atlanta Bay High School history, who, if you were later than three minutes after the official start to the lesson, would assign you a detention and a thousand word essay entitled 'How the influence of Maths has helped our Society'. I knew this because he was my maths teacher for years seven through ten and wasn't exactly imaginative in his methods of punishment.

"Bye Ariel!" he called as we parted ways in the corridor – he to the second floor where his Maths classroom was situated and me to the first where you could find my English Lit room.

I glanced at a clock as I ran past and saw that it was nearly ten to two, over five minutes after the beginning of the lesson. I silently prayed that Mrs Leigh, my teacher, was in a good mood and would be quietly accepting of my lateness and just ask me to sit down and get out my copy of _Pride and Prejudice_, like she normally did when I was late back from my little expeditions.

I hurtled towards the classroom door, decided not to waste time knocking and dashed through it. Unfortunately Mrs Leigh's floor had been recently polished and I skidded with a screech across the front of the classroom until I crashed into a tall, muscular figure who I knew couldn't possibly be Mrs Leigh.

"Oh my goodness, I'm so sorry!" I gushed, reddening so much I knew I wouldn't be able to look the person in the face. I could see Mrs Leigh glowering at me from behind him cantankerously.

"Don't worry about it, it's fine, are you alright?" he replied. His voice was so undoubtedly familiar I glanced up to look at his face and was stopped dead in my tracks.

It was Eric.

He was smiling at me genuinely, his bright blue eyes sparkling magnificently and his face looking as divine as usual, maybe even more so up close.

"I– I'm fine," I stammered.

"Ariel, please sit down and get out your copy of _Pride and Prejudice_ – Eric is giving us a presentation about the book and it's author to help us with our project," Mrs Leigh snapped, bringing me out of my reverie and causing me to sit down in my usual seat, by myself at the front – right in front of Eric. He smiled at me again, and proceeded to inform us about the times our favourite author lived in.

I was prematurely in heaven.

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Did you like it? Please leave a review and tell me what you think! Thanks for reading, merry christmas :)

:) x Lily Orange x (:


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